In the thread about bank accounts - mention was made of how different Louisiana law is different from the rest of the country, because of differences in the Napoleonic Code used by the french settlers there.
Any specific examples? I am curious.
Phouchg
Lovable Rogue
The essence of the civil law is that every law of the country is “codified,” or written into the law. Codification is the responsibility of the legislative body. The judge’s role is limited to the application of the law to the facts of a given case.
In a common law system the judge makes law where there is an absense of direction in statute and that decision becomes case law which is then followed in subsequent decisions. Unlike civil law, a common law court hands out long written decisions setting out the logic behind a judgement.
I suspect in practice the differences are somewhat less profound. No statute can ever be specific enough to cover all situations and some interpretation must fill in the gaps.
Well, it’s been about 10 years since I was there, but at the time you could buy a drink with five shots of alcohol at the drive through daquiri hut, even if you were the only one in the car. Complete in styrofoam cup with straw. You don’t see that in the other 49 to often. I was told by the locals that this was somehow influenced by Napoleonic law, but it could just be that they like their liquor on the hoof.
During one Mardi Gras I was visiting friends who lived there and I read a paper that gave advice to visitors how not to be arrested. The only thing I remember of the artical was that it said, “You can be arrested for resisting arrest even if there was no cause to arrest you in the first place.” It mentioned something about the Napoleonic Law.
A judge is not limited to the application of a statute to the facts. He, first, must intepret the statute, as it seems that legislatures like to write ambiguous statutes. He then may have to determine its constitutionality, both with the state constitution (if a state court) and the US constitution. Moreover, all the states have a common law system, except La. Common law is the prior law of England when we became independent, as modified by case law here. Since La doesn’t follow the English system of law, it does not have common law. Further, a statute in derogation of the common law is strictly construed. That’s the reason that some states, despite having statutes providing for ceremonial marriages (as all do), continue to have common law marriages. (Other states specifically provide for the continuation of common law marriages, but not all states that allow such marriages have statutes so providing.)
Identifying the source is left as an exercise for the student. 
“A Streetcar Named Desire”
Make it tough next time, OK?
– Beruang
What if you resist that arrest? Ow… head… hurts… brain… seizing… up…
In most, if not all States, the State law on banking transactions and commercial transactions is a statute called the Uniform Commercial Code. The statute was proposed years ago by the American Law Institute so that the rules for promissory notes, checks, commercial sales of movable property, security interests and the like would be the same all across the country and therefore the rules of commerce across State lines and within States would generally be known and predictable. The UCC has been revised within the last few years to include things like commercial leases. It is the UCC that allows you to know that when you buy a farm tractor FOB Waterloo, Iowa, that means the same thing in California as it does in Iowa.
Up until recent years Louisiana was, I think, the only State that had not adopted the UCC. Because of this it was a real pain to get a security interest in a carnival ride that would be enforced in LA when the carnival went bust and was wintering in Baton Rouge.
I don’t know, but LA may have adopted the revised UCC. Having different rules in LA was a real boon for LA lawyers since you had to consult one of them before doing any business with a LA buyer, seller, debtor, creditor, bank, stock broker, etc. It was a real pain for everyone else.
My wife was a lawyer in the Dominican Republic, where the laws are based on the French civil law system as well - a holdover from the days in which the D.R. was part of Haiti.
According to her, one of the key differences is the absence of precedent. That is, while it’s the responsibility of the judges to apply the law to the facts, their interpretation is not dependent on what prior judges have done with similar or even identical facts.
As an example: let us say that here in Virginia, the legislature passed a law forbidding piercing the skin, or threatening to pierce the skin, of any person by means of an object covered with bacteria.
Let us further say that I, in a fit of rage, threaten to bite the phone repairman when he cannot fix my phone.
I am charged under the new law - after all, reasons the prosecutor, my teeth have bacteria on them. “Wait a second,” I say. “That law refers to objects - needles and so forth. The legislature never intended to include teeth, or they would have said something about teeth. Besides, there is already a law about threatening to assault someone; charge me under that.”
The issue would go to a judge. He would decide if, as a matter of law, threatening to bite someone was a violation of this new statue. The jury would decide if I did it, and what my punishment would be, but the judge would rule on what the law meant. It would be a “matter of first impression” - that is, an issue that no court had decided before. Eventually the Virginia Supreme Court would rule on whether the trial judge was right. Future bite cases would be prosecuted - or not - based on the decision in Bricker v. Commonwealth. If the decision was that teeth are not “an object” within the meaning of the law, then no future biter could be charged under that law.
In the civil law system - at least as it’s implemented in the D.R. - the judges’ decision would affect only me. I could be convicted, while the next biter’s judge could rule that teeth are not an object and as a matter of law, he’s innocent.
This is all as-I-understand-it, mind you.
I happen to have a civil law degree from Quebec, so I have some knowledge of the topic. I’ve never practised in Quebec, though, so it’s purely an academic perspective.
I have to quibble a bit with Ned - although codification is one of the factors associated with the civil law, not all civil law jurisdictions have codified the law. The Scottish legal system, for example, has strong roots in the civil law, not English common law, but has never been codified. Quebec has been a civil law jurisdiction since it was first founded as a French colony, but did not codify the law until 1866. Prior to that, it relied on the civil law principles set out in the “coûtume de Paris” and the classic civil law authorities like Pothier.
I would also say that although judges in the civil tradition normally aren’t considered as powerful as common law judges, it’s not a mechanical process of figuring out the statute and applying it. No statute can be that precise. The civil law is highly principled and much “tidier” than the common law, but there are still things that judges have to decide, based on the general principles of the statute.
For example, the basic principle of what common lawyers call tort law is, in Quebec, summarised in one article of the Code. The metaphor often used in the civil law is that the statute is a fountain, and each judge has to go to the fountain for the source of the law; they can’t themselves make law. (Note to legal realists - there are obviously some grounds for skeptical inquiry here. )
Overall, if I had to characterise the jurisprudential differences between the two systems, I would say that the civil law system tend to be deductive in its analysis, and the common law system tends to be inductive. That is, the civil law judge starts with the general principles set out in the statute, and reasons deductively how those principles should apply. A common law judge tends to start with the principle “like cases should be decided alike,” and considers the precedents from other decisions, the general principles of the common law, and statutory provisions.
As Bricker notes, a pure civil system doesn’t rely on precedent - that is, the decision by the judge in a particular case is not itself the statement of law, and therefore not binding on other judges. Other judges at the same court level need not follow it, and strictly speaking, a decision of a higher court is not binding on a lower court, although as a practical matter a lower court may be heavily infulenced by what higher courts say.
As well, appellate remedies are different from the common law system. A dissatisfied litigant seeks what common lawyers would call judicial review of the lower court’s decision, rather than an appeal. The higher courts have the power to set aside the lower court’s decision, if the higher court thinks it is erroneous, but the higher court does not have the authority to substitute its own decision. Instead, it remits the case to the lower court for further proceedings consistent with the higher court’s decision, much like the U.S. Supreme Court remitting a matter to the state courts. (That’s why the highest civil court in France is called the “Cour de cassation” - literally, the “court of breaking.” It “breaks” the lower court decision, but does not substitute something in its place.)
All of the above relates to the procedure and jurisprudential approach of the civil law. If you’re looking for substantive differences, some are obvious, some are subtle, some evince a different way of thinking about legal principles. One of the best examples of the latter point is the civil law concept of “obligations.” In the common law, the law of tort, the law of contract, and the law of limitations are all distinct areas of the law. Tort and contract are both firmly based in judge-made common law and are distinct from each other, while the law of limitations is entirely statutory in nature. The civil law considers all three to be sub-divisions of the general category of obligations, since they deal with how people can acruire rights and obligations with respect to other people, and how those obligations can be extinguished.
One of the clearest examples of the difference in substantive law is in the law of property. The common law of property is ultimately based on English feudal tenures and estates, with centuries of accretions through judicial decisions and statutory amendments. By contrast, when France underwent its revolution, they abolished all incidents of the feudal system, and based their property law on the classic Roman law of property, which in theory is much simpler and elegant than the common law.
There are other areas of difference as well, such as the injunction (frowned on in the classic civil law tradition) and the trust (a uniquely English invention, although of course civil law does have the principles of fiduciary obligations.)
Now, in spite of all that, my general feeling is that you will get very similar results under the two systems. After all, both England and the continent share liberal, Christian and capitalist traditions, all of which influenced the development of their legal principles.
So why the fuss about the differences, if the result is often the same? The analogy I use is that a Chevy and a Ford both have water pumps, but you can’t expect to use a water pump from one in the other. The two systems have been designed differently, and even though they may produce similar results, the workings may be very different.
Wow, somebody actually mentioned one of my threads!!! 
(I guess that I’m easily impressed.) I actually live in Louisiana, and I still have no idea what the difference between Louisiana’s Napoleonic Code and the the government of other states. But this website may help. You’ll have to scroll down a little bit, though.
I have heard that under the Napoleonic Code, the defendant is not given the assumption of innocence in criminal cases. Is this true, and if so, how does it work as a practical matter in court?
Little Nemo, I’m afraid I’m much shakier on criminal matters in the civil law world, since the criminal law in Canada, including Québec, is based on the English common law.
One quibble: the Napoleanic Code is the civil law of France, not the criminal law. I believe that there is an equivalent Penal Code, but I don’t think Napolean had much influence on it.
My understanding is that a couple of centuries ago, it might have been accurate to say that there was no presumption of innocence in the criminal process of civil law countries, which was strongly inquisatorial, rather than the accusatorial system of the common law. However, as part of the revolutionary period, a lot of innovations were made to criminal process, including the introduction of a jury and various procedural reforms that amount to a presumption of innocence.
The presumption of innnocence in the common law system is closely tied to the common law principles of evidence (e.g. - “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” is both a statement of principle and a statement of the evidentiary burden on the Crown). My general recollection is that the civil law system takes different approachs to rules of evidence, and therefore the linkage between the principle of innocent until proven guilty doesn’t fit so easily into a statement of evidenctiary weight. Instead, it’s protected through various procedural protections, such as the power of the juge d’instruction to review the prosecutor’s case before it goes to trial, and to stay charges that the juge d’instructiondoes not think are warranted.
'Fraid that’s not as clear cut an answer as you were hoping for, but I would summarise it by saying that the presumption of innocence is an important principle of the criminal process, but it is protected by different procedural mechanisms than in the common law system.